When we craft a fictional world for a
commercial readership, the reader wants to
believe in our world and mentally ‘live’ in it. The
novelist Clara Reeve made this point as long
ago as 1785.
‘The perfection of [the novel] is to
represent every scene, in so easy and
natural a manner ... until we are affected
by the joys or distresses of the persons in
the story, as if they were our own.’
For example, if you want your character to take
a bus from Leighton Buzzard to arrive before
her Luton office opens at 8am, use a real
timetable. ‘She jumped on the 6.55am Arriva
and it brought her to Luton at
7.44am, with just enough time to buy a
newspaper.’
Yes, there is such a bus! If you invented it,
some reader would be sure to spot the error,
discard your story in disgust and possibly chide
you in a web forum. (Before you mention it, the
photo at right does not depict an Arriva bus.)
But if you are verifiably correct in all your
minutiae (even a bus timetable), such tiresome
pedants will not only indulge your Big Lie - the
story itself. They may also, in admiration, buy
everything else you’ve written .
Authors have used this trick since classical
times to give their stories credibility. Both
Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid built
fables around a real city - Troy. The fiction of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales cites the real
roads and wayside inns of 14th century Kent.
James Joyce consulted Thom’s Dublin
Directory to find a real Dublin house - vacant
in 1904 - where he could lodge the fictive
Bloom and Molly of Ulysses . And so on.
Problem: It’s easy to research a place we
know well. But suppose our story is set in a
location - say Santo Domingo (to take a
random example) - that we can’t easily visit?
How can we still discover those little details of
local colour that are so trivial they are not
mentioned in guide books - but which are so
accurate they will convince a Santo Domingo
shopkeeper that we live next door to him?
Solution: find the place on Google Maps and
YouTube!
The highly respectable poet, Prof Grevel Lindop,
recently published an enchanting book Travels
on the Dance Floor . Inexplicably, he
journeyed around the seediest nightclubs of
South America - at the age of 61 and by himself
- to dance the salsa. When back in England
and writing up his notes, he discovered he had
forgotten some details of his nocturnal forays.
(Strange, that.)
So he did a keyword search on YouTube. He
discovered amateur videos. They had been
shot in those very bars, clubs and dancehalls
where he had sashayed away the night. They
gave him the local colour to put in his book.
‘Thank heavens,’ (he must have thought) ‘I
can’t blame the tequila. There is a pink
elephant hanging from the ceiling at La
Sarten! ’
(And there really is. I've just found it on
YouTube.)
Seriously, YouTube - and other video and
‘virtual tourist’ sites - offer us powerful ways to
populate our stories with intriguing minutiae.
They convince because they’re true . We’ve
been there. And all without the expense of
travel (or tequila)!
commercial readership, the reader wants to
believe in our world and mentally ‘live’ in it. The
novelist Clara Reeve made this point as long
ago as 1785.
‘The perfection of [the novel] is to
represent every scene, in so easy and
natural a manner ... until we are affected
by the joys or distresses of the persons in
the story, as if they were our own.’
For example, if you want your character to take
a bus from Leighton Buzzard to arrive before
her Luton office opens at 8am, use a real
timetable. ‘She jumped on the 6.55am Arriva
and it brought her to Luton at
7.44am, with just enough time to buy a
newspaper.’
Yes, there is such a bus! If you invented it,
some reader would be sure to spot the error,
discard your story in disgust and possibly chide
you in a web forum. (Before you mention it, the
photo at right does not depict an Arriva bus.)
But if you are verifiably correct in all your
minutiae (even a bus timetable), such tiresome
pedants will not only indulge your Big Lie - the
story itself. They may also, in admiration, buy
everything else you’ve written .
Authors have used this trick since classical
times to give their stories credibility. Both
Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid built
fables around a real city - Troy. The fiction of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales cites the real
roads and wayside inns of 14th century Kent.
James Joyce consulted Thom’s Dublin
Directory to find a real Dublin house - vacant
in 1904 - where he could lodge the fictive
Bloom and Molly of Ulysses . And so on.
Problem: It’s easy to research a place we
know well. But suppose our story is set in a
location - say Santo Domingo (to take a
random example) - that we can’t easily visit?
How can we still discover those little details of
local colour that are so trivial they are not
mentioned in guide books - but which are so
accurate they will convince a Santo Domingo
shopkeeper that we live next door to him?
Solution: find the place on Google Maps and
YouTube!
The highly respectable poet, Prof Grevel Lindop,
recently published an enchanting book Travels
on the Dance Floor . Inexplicably, he
journeyed around the seediest nightclubs of
South America - at the age of 61 and by himself
- to dance the salsa. When back in England
and writing up his notes, he discovered he had
forgotten some details of his nocturnal forays.
(Strange, that.)
So he did a keyword search on YouTube. He
discovered amateur videos. They had been
shot in those very bars, clubs and dancehalls
where he had sashayed away the night. They
gave him the local colour to put in his book.
‘Thank heavens,’ (he must have thought) ‘I
can’t blame the tequila. There is a pink
elephant hanging from the ceiling at La
Sarten! ’
(And there really is. I've just found it on
YouTube.)
Seriously, YouTube - and other video and
‘virtual tourist’ sites - offer us powerful ways to
populate our stories with intriguing minutiae.
They convince because they’re true . We’ve
been there. And all without the expense of
travel (or tequila)!
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